Back when editors used videotape machines, getting video from the camcorderinto the videotape editing machine was pretty straightforward. Pop the cassetteout of the camcorder, put it into the videotape editing machine. But these days, videotape editing machines are pretty much things of the past. And thereare several different ways to record and store video. So you need multiplemeans to get the video into your PC.I like the one method that's most frequently used, that is going from a DV orHDV camcorder like this guy and the way you do that is by using a FireWirecable like this. You connect one end to your camcorder, the other end into yourPC. You attach this to AC power as opposed to a battery because you don't wantit to go into sleep mode in the middle of the transfer and probably youswitch it over to VCR as opposed to camera. And you get this all fired up andready to go, you can start transferring or capturing the video from yourcamcorder into your hard drive via Premiere Elements. So let's do that.

So we are going to start with a new project here that we created for thistutorial called 03-capture. It is a standard definition NTSC. You could be HDV,Widescreen or Standard Definition, whichever one you want to use. And the wayyou get started is by going to the Organize Task workspace. Then go to the GetMedia toolset. You click that. You want to go click on DV Camcorder or HDVCamcorder. In our case, it's going to be DV camcorder and that opens up theCapture window.One of the cool things about video capture using a digital video or HDVcamcorder is that you can use what's called Device Control. FireWire cableshave device control that allow you to remotely control an HDV or other kind of camcorder.

So here we have the typical VCR controls down here. I'll click the Play button.That will start playing this VCR. And this is where you do the capture process.You can set the camcorder tape to wherever you want to start the process byrewinding or fast forwarding, and then you click Capture to get going.But before you click Capture, you want to do a few things in terms of the settings.First of all, you want to give your clips a generic name that will be numberedincrementally with each new clip as it's being recorded. So this particularproject is called 03-capture. So by default, the Clip Name will be 03-captureand it will be -1, -2, -3, as you start incrementally editing clips.

I want to change that, for instance, to say I want to call this horse.Because I'm going to do much of horse videos. That will then change incrementally as Igrab each new clip. I also want to select where I'm going to store that,whichever file folder that might be.And down here I have some more settings. I want to capture video and audio.I do not want to capture to the Timeline because I know that the video thatI shot here was not sequential. I know I'm going to have to take clips andarrange them in the timeline in a certain order that won't match the way I shot this. I'm going to turn that off.But if you know for sure that you captured something or that you shot somethingin a certain sequential order and that if you drop it right on to the timeline,it will be pretty much the way you want to do your finished video, then youmight as well keep that thing checked.

This checkbox talks about Splitting Scenes. Now what happens when PremiereElements looks at your videotape, it decides whether a scene had changed basedupon the Timecode or the Content.The Timecode has to do with the Pause/Record button on your camcorder.Every time you press that, it puts on a new Timecode and Premiere Elements canrecognize that and create a new clip for each time you press the Pause/Recordbutton. That's a very convenient thing and it's a good idea to do that I think.If you select the Content side of things, Premiere Elements analyzes the video,looks at the video if you want to call it that way and tries to figure out whena scene has changed, whether you have pressed the Pause/Record button or not.

I think it's best to stick with the Timecode because Premiere Elementscan certainly make a mistake and split a scene in two that you don't wantsplit in two. You can always repair it later. But let's not worry about thatand stick with the Timecode.Finally there is this Smart Tagging option and I think this should be uncheckedall the time. Here is what happens. If you check Smart Tagging, PremiereElements looks for all these different kinds of characteristics on each of yourclips, it looks whether there are some motion in it, whether there are faces,might be blurred, might be too bright, too much contrast, might be too muchcamera movement and it marks that on your clips.Well I think you are a better analyzer of your videotape than PremiereElements and you don't want to go through this time consuming process oflooking at all of your clips before it loads up into your project. So I wouldswitch off Smart Tagging and just simply never use that. You are going to beable to do a better job than Premiere Elements.

So once you have got things setup and you have got your videotape queued upto where you want to start, you just simply click Capture. And what happens nowis that Premiere Elements will start recording this video from the camcorderinto your hard drive. It will name each clip as it sees changes incrementally.Notice it's now horse 02, horse 03 because this is where I pressed thePause/Record button on the camcorder.It's splitting the scenes by Timecode. We will go to one more here. There is 4,because I changed scenes again. Now when I'm done here, when I have recorded all theclips I want to record, I click Pause then I just close this guy. Then yourclips will show up inside the Project View. These are those four clips we justcaptured and each one of them is this individual clip from beginning to end.

We will click on one just to take a look at it. There is the clip that we justcaptured and it captures every frame, beginning to end, until it gets to the next clip.So that's how you capture video from a videotape, DV or HDV camcorder into your project. So now that you have captured these video clips, you are ready tostart creating your video project.

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Released

2/19/2009

Showing off vacation highlights or making a music video with a professional touch is just a few keystrokes away with Premiere Elements 7. In Premiere Elements 7 Essential Training, Jeff Sengstack, Adobe Certified Expert in Premiere Pro, breaks down the editing workflow into bite–sized pieces, about everything from setting up a project to exporting the final video to any format. In between, Jeff covers the basics of editing as well as advanced features like picture–in–picture overlays and dazzling visual effects. Exercise files accompany the course.